“In reply to my last letter, wherein I expressed a fear that you were not progressing with your study of the Canon, I have received several from you, in all of which you seem to think I meant the Canon of Buddha, and you are astonished at my recommendation of such pernicious works. But how could I possibly have intended any other than the Canon of the sages of China? And for you to have thus missed the point of my letter is a good illustration of what I meant when I said I feared you were not progressing with your study of the Canon. “Now a thorough knowledge of our Canon has not been attained by any one for a very long period. Study of the Canon alone does not suffice for a thorough knowledge of the Canon. Consequently, I have been myself an omnivorous reader of books of all kinds, even, for example, of ancient medical and botanical works. I have, moreover, dipped into treatises on agriculture and on needlework, all of which I have found very profitable in aiding me to seize the great scheme of the Canon itself. For learning in these days is a totally different pursuit from what it was in the olden times; and it is now impossible otherwise to get at the real meaning of our ancient sages. “There was Yang Hsiung. He hated all books that were not orthodox. Yet he made a wide study of heterodox writers. By force of education he was enabled to take what of good and to reject what of bad he found in each. Their pernicious influence was altogether lost on him; while on the other hand he was prepared the more effectively to elucidate what we know to be the truth. Now, do you consider that I have been corrupted by these pernicious influences? If so, you know me not. “No! the pernicious influences of the age are not to be sought for in the Canon of Buddha. They are to be found in the corruption and vice of those in high places; in the false and shameless conduct which is now rife among us. Do you not agree with me?” * * * * * [Sidenote: SU SHIH] SU SHIH (1036-1101), better known by his fancy name as Su Tung-p‘o, whose early education was superintended by his mother, produced such excellent compositions at the examination for his final degree that the examiner, Ou-yang Hsiu, suspected them to be the work of a qualified substitute. Ultimately he came out first on the list. He rose to be a statesman, who made more enemies than friends, and was perpetually struggling against the machinations of unscrupulous opponents, which on one occasion resulted in his banishment to the island of Hainan, then a barbarous and almost unknown region. He was also a brilliant essayist and poet, and his writings are still the delight of the Chinese. The following is an account of a midnight picnic to a spot on the banks of a river at which a great battle had taken place nearly nine hundred years before, and where one of the opposing fleets was burnt to the water’s edge, reddening a wall, probably the cliff alongside:--